The Nature of Memory

How many more than these 3,000 die every day? Why do we remember these so well, but forget all the others, or even hasten their way to doom?

Do we remember all that we do to bring 9/11s upon us? Do we remember our own cowardly response to these attacks? Our own slaughter of innocents?

We choose to “remember.” We choose to tell a story. We choose to lie.

Oh, yes, there are grains of truth in the story. But it is far from memory. It is construct. It is a fairy tale of a unity we do not live in our daily lives, of a courage we do not show, of heroes who met their end little knowing of the desecration that would be done in their name.